Song Song walked past me and stood on the blackened grass where the previous array had struck.

"This might hurt a bit," I warned her.

"Mhm," she nodded, a bored look in her eyes.

I erected the same barrier as before, with some minor tweaks. One of them was to avoid shooting lightning randomly, as that cost me Qi. Instead, I replaced it with a single bolt of lightning that would act like normal lightning.

Of course, lightning and electricity are lazy forms of energy. They chose the fastest path to the ground, and that path was Song Song. I had found my lightning rod.

Something interesting happened as the lightning rumbled and was about to strike Song Song. Her hair rose, and even she looked curious.

"Hm?" She turned toward me, raising a questioning brow.

But the only answer she got was a lightning bolt raining down. Before the first bolt was done, another came down. They rained so frequently that the victim wouldn't have time to breathe.

This was good. Of course, it had a major weakness—if someone carried some metal, threw it around, or used a sword, it might make the array useless. Also, lightning cost too much Qi to use the array at full power.

I walked toward the barrier and entered it without trouble, and the lightning immediately stopped hitting Song Song. This revealed that she was covered in a dark crust. The crust cracked, showing one of her piercing blue eyes. She looked awake, not bored from hanging around the house and cultivating.

As the lightning rumbled in the dark clouds above, I felt a soft tingle on my scalp.

I was about to be hit by the lightning too. The array didn't discriminate. Good thing I learned this here rather than in the middle of a battle.

Before the main lightning strike, the electricity traveled toward the earth in many random paths. Once a path was found, the big strike happened exactly through that path. So indeed, the lightning didn't know where the rod was; it searched to find it.

A simple barrier that stopped that signal was easy to make, which was another weakness of this technique. Any Array Conjurer with basic mastery could make a simple barrier to prevent this and bypass the lightning strike.

"Even at Foundation Establishment, I felt a stunning effect for a second," Song Song said as she broke out of her darkened crust. Her hair, clothes, and skin were perfectly fine, without a scratch. "Though after the first time, it was easy to push the lightning out of my body using Qi. Kind of like this."

As she said that, her hair rose again and a lightning bolt rained down on her. But the electricity seemed to pass straight through her this time, causing no damage.

It was frustrating how easily she dismantled a technique like this, making it almost ineffective against her. However, it wasn't as easy as she made it seem; she had to dispel the lightning the instant it touched her.

"How about a friendly spar?" she asked, a soft smile dancing on her lips. "After all, you need to test this technique in real combat."

I knew she was trying to bullshit me. With a smile like that, she almost looked like the friendly girl next door—the kind you'd have a crush on but never the courage to ask out. In this context, and considering it was Song Song, she was definitely using that smile to get me to do something. She probably knew the smile wouldn't work on me, but her other smile would have been too intimidating.

But she knew I was a sucker for trying out new techniques.

"Sure," I said, clasping my hands together and immediately changing the shape of the array, making it a closer barrier from the ground. Though it was a small change, it disrupted the delicate balance Song Song had with her technique, and she frowned.

I charged at her like a bullet. Halfway there, I realized I wouldn't be able to attack her without taking down the simple barrier, as it would be destroyed when we made contact.

In a split second, I changed the array's rules so it would search for a new target every half a second. That gave me about half a second without needing the barrier, allowing me to hit her.

As I got close and Song Song was being bombarded by lightning, the frown on her face turned upside down. She smirked as she noticed my fist aimed at her stomach. She grabbed my hand, and immediately, the lightning shock traveled through my body. The lightning array, modified so much, had become fragile, and that instant of shock was enough to cause the barrier to crash.

"I might not know much about arrays, but I have been trained to counter them," Song Song revealed with her signature villainous smile. "Changing the array's rules so many times makes it fragile. You must cast a new array with those rules in mind to avoid creating that weakness. And with me holding you, there's no way I'd let you do that."

"Okay, can you let me go now?" I raised a questioning brow and pointed at where she had caught my forearm.

Next time, I would use gloves made from Dancing Jade Armor when punching someone stunned by my lightning.

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Instead of letting go, she tightened her grip on my arm and asked, "Do you know how easily I could have ripped your head off if this had been a real fight?"

"Yeah, I would expect you to be able to do that. There's a huge difference in power between us. If you couldn't kill me in one attack with that gap, you'd be incompetent," I shrugged.

She didn't let go of my forearm and dangerously narrowed her eyes. "That is why you should never pick a fight with a Foundation Establishment Cultivator, no matter how confident you might feel."

"Why would I feel confident?" I raised a questioning brow.

"Sorry, I might have missed something, but I remember seeing five or six corpses in the icy room after I broke through," she said. "I might not have been able to see or hear anything due to your barriers. However, I could still sense everything that was happening."

"I don't quite see where you're going with this."

"What I mean is that you're a reckless fool and might have the tendency to risk your life for certain people due to the inherent goodness of your heart. Next time you try to protect someone with your life and you die, I will make sure to kill whoever you saved," Song Song's gaze was cold as ice; she really meant what she was saying.

It wasn't like I enjoyed risking my life, but there was context to the situation every time I did so. Often, there was no chance to escape, and ironically, risking my life was the best chance I had at surviving. During those kinds of situations, I put my emotions and heart aside. But I doubted she would care about my explanations.

After a few seconds of staring at me, she let go of my arm. Despite her firm grasp, there were no injuries.

"What if the person I'm trying to save is you?" I asked, smiling. This was a paradoxical question.

She was taking this whole thing too seriously. We were cultivators; we walked beside death all the time. If I wanted safety, I would have closed myself in the Outer Sect's dormitory room and never come out.

"Why would I need a Qi Gathering Cultivator to come and save me? I made the mistake of taking a risk to try and gain recognition and not shame people who don't care about me. Those same people didn't even bother taking me out of prison when I was there. I won't make the same mistake twice," she said. "You're an adviser, remember that. You're not supposed to fight my battles."

Staying closed up in here and not killing anyone might be getting to her. Or we were really beginning to affect each other; she was growing softer, and I was becoming a harsher person.

People used to say that you become those you hang out with. It couldn't be more true in our case. I just hoped no one else would notice the weakness Song Song had developed by becoming softer.

Though it wasn't like she hadn't grown more dangerous either. This was no longer the raging, berserker-like Song Song they were dealing with. Now, she knew how to scheme and trick people. It was perfectly shown when she acted like she was hurt by my lightning—Song Song would have usually never done something like this.

"Anyway, how long would it take for an average cultivator to expel the lightning, a normal Foundation Establishment Cultivator?" I asked, trying to steer the conversation away from useless worries. Despite Song Song's warning, I knew my own limits best.

My question was genuine, not just a diversion. However, asking about this right after she cautioned me against fighting opponents of her caliber might seem insensitive. But Song Song understood I was intrinsically curious.

"Against someone like me, the lightning disperses as soon as it touches my blood. For others, it could take four to five seconds if caught off guard. Maybe less, but they'd definitely be stunned," Song Song explained.

Given Song Song's reaction time, this array seemed somewhat ineffective against her. But we were discussing normal cultivators here.

I closed my eyes, focusing on adjusting the array. Making changes before erecting it wouldn't compromise its durability—only alterations after construction affected that.

"Do you want to spar again?" Song Song asked, her eyes gleaming with anticipation as she gave me a dangerous smile. "This time, let's go a bit all out."

What did "a bit all out" even mean?

Without waiting for a signal, I erected a barrier around us. Song Song smiled, not taking my little trick to heart; we both knew I stood no chance. It was all in good fun, and I was testing some of my wilder ideas.

Her hand twitched, activating the new parameters of the barrier. A lightning bolt shot toward her, much more powerful than before. It slammed into her at full force, but she effortlessly broke through it. Suddenly shifting from seeing the bright lightning to feeling her hand about to grab my face, blocking my vision completely, was startling.

Song Song grabbed my head, ready to smash it against the barrier walls. I quickly dismissed the barrier, but she tried to throw me away like a ragdoll before I could deploy more tricks.

However, this worked in my favor. I didn't even touch the ground and swiftly erected a stationary barrier mid-air—a translucent slab capable of supporting my weight. It was an idea inspired by the floating carpet the governor had given me.

Song Song's smile widened. She made a flickering motion with her middle finger, closed one eye to aim better, and a Qi bead the size of a bean formed in front of her. With a flick, she launched it at me.

"Shit!" I muttered as I sensed the attack coming. I jumped off the platform just in time to barely dodge the explosion from the destroyed barrier platform.

Song Song was like those annoying opponents I used to battle in Street Fighter when I was younger—a relentless spammer ready to flick another red bead of Qi at me without hesitation.

With a quick thought, I conjured a jade soldier beside me in mid-air. It grabbed my arm and swung me away from the crimson Qi bead hurtling my way.

Song Song's eyes tracked me like a hawk honing in on its prey.

She was significantly stronger since breaking through. This Song Song could easily finish off Ye An in one attack.

I barely had time to process this as Song Song blitzed through my defenses. In an instant, she was in front of me, gripping my face gently as she brought me to the ground. Her fist swung down, smashing into the earth beside my head, causing the ground to shake, crack, and form a small crater. Also, the sound of the ground crashing made my ears ring.

That would have turned my head into tomato soup if it had landed…

"You know, if you're so bad at hiding, you really shouldn't try it," Song Song called out, glancing towards the shadow of a tree near the pond where Song San stood with his usual nonchalant gaze.

He wasn't lying down as usual. He looked ready to defend himself, suggesting he saw his sister as a threat.

"Hey, I'm not here to fight," Song San raised his hands. "Actually, I'm here to give you some news. Have you heard about the situation on the war front? Also, you were both making so much noise, I couldn’t help myself but come and check what was happening."

“That is a lie right there, I know there was an array that stops noise from going out, and outside noise from coming in,” Song Song refuted, and stood up from where she was holding me down and turned toward her brother.

“Well, the main point is the development in the war front,” Song San took a step back and a bead of sweat rolled down his brow. It seemed like he was expecting her to attack him for that lie.